Fancy Foods to Celebrate

Go ahead, indulge. This is the time of year when anything goes
—including waistlines. Don't worry about dieting (you can
do that in January), forget the grocery budget, it's time to
splurge. Delicacies and decadence are calling out: it's the
holidays!

Every holiday season, I pull out my "celebrity chef" cookbooks
and go to town. You know those books, the ones with full color
close-up photos on heavy gloss paper of intricate,
vertically-stacked dishes, and delectably complex recipes you know
you'll never cook. But if you do, even if it's only once, holiday
entertaining is the time to unveil them. For after such Herculean
efforts, you certainly want to get the most exposure and applause
you can get for your creations.

Of course, I do exaggerate. Some chefs' recipes are not
difficult, they're just innovative. Or, their recipes work simply
because the ingredients, albeit exotic or intensely flavored ones,
are allowed to shine through without being overly seasoned. Take
Mario Battali's
Fettucine with Lobster for instance: lobster meat mixed with
pasta in a puréed sauce of fresh herbs and tomatoes. You don't need
a CIA degree for this one, but the results make you seem like a
Michelin chef—because the ingredients are rich, luscious
and the sum of their parts works. One bite sends you to heaven.

In theory, I believe if you
have the very best ingredients, you too can be a Charlie Trotter,
the legendary Chicago chef. His recipes are complex, in technique
and in taste, but don't even begin to attempt them if your peas
aren't perfectly picked that day, or your truffles are
second-rate.

Some of us, myself included, must travel hundreds of miles for
gourmet and impeccably fresh products, or we seek them out online
and in catalogs, gathering caviars, foie gras, duck, and even
lobsters, around which to stage our holiday meals. But even without
the gourmet goodies, I still manage to serve up splendid holiday
fare using my local markets—with recipes like Martha Stewart's Porcini
Mushrooms with Camembert and Emeril Lagasse's Hot
Mayonnaise-Glazed Scallops, for instance.

I've collected below a wide range of indulgent recipes, ones you
may not make daily but when the celebration calls for flashiness,
sumptuous flavors, and spectacular desserts, these dishes take the
cake. Some are time-consuming, others merely seem like you slaved
for days. So haul out the cutting boards, clear off the counters.
Send out the invitations and let's get cooking!

(By the way, for those with less time available, tune in next
week for a New Year's Buffet You Can Make Advance.)